


Promise Not to Stop When I Say When

by waketosleep



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crack, Fights, M/M, Nerdiness, Romance, Scott Pilgrim AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-08-02
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:37:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr. Age: 23. Rating: Awesome. Fun Fact: Hero of this story.</p><p>Charles Xavier. Age: Unknown. Occupation: Unknown. Fun Fact: The literal man of Erik's dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Erik Lehnsherr's Precious Little Life

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing else I'm working on is snappy or crack-addled enough for my tastes right now, so here's the start of what happens when Sutlers and I spend like a week, week and a half throwing ideas at each other in a bid to see which ones bounce and which ones stick. Updates may be sporadic.

"You know, band practices are supposed to be for practicing," said Emma nonchalantly. She wasn't very good at acting nonchalant; she just came across as terrifying. Terrifying was her main setting, so it was a good thing that onstage it came off as sexy.

"You don't need practice," said Erik, watching Young Hank play Tetris DS over his shoulder. "You're the talented one."

"Did I say I needed practice?" she demanded. "I'm being altruistic. Giving you assholes a chance to not suck at music."

"That, that altruism thing," said Young Hank, glancing up just as he executed a tetris with flawless skill, "I think you need to practice that a little."

Emma glared for a minute. Young Hank wilted and Erik thought seriously about coming to his defence. Then Emma pointed a manicured finger at the drum kit and waited. Young Hank sighed and closed his DS before hauling himself off of the ancient couch in his mom's basement.

"Come on, Erik," he said as he sidled around his snare drum. "We won't win the battle of the bands on good looks and charm."

"Says who?" asked Erik, getting up and stretching.

Emma snorted. "You don't have the good looks and charm to waste on something like that anyway, Erik."

"I beg your pardon." He tossed the strap of his bass over his head and shook out his legs as he took his mark to Emma's right.

"It's adorable that you think you can keep secrets from me. You're dating a high-schooler."

Young Hank paused in the act of bringing a drumstick down on a cymbal. "What?"

"He's dating a high-schooler," she repeated for his benefit.

"We're not dating," Erik protested.

"That isn't a good defence against how you're a creepy sexual predator."

"She's seventeen! I'm twenty-three! It's just a platonic thing!"

"Who is it?" asked Young Hank, also a high-schooler.

"She better not be over here all the time interfering with practices," Emma went on.

"Don't worry, Frosty. It's cool."

"She _better not_ ," Emma said through her teeth. "I'll kill her. I'll make her cry. You'll never get any high-schooler action again. It'll be a public service."

"She's not going to come over!" Erik said loudly.

And then the doorbell rang.

 **AND THEN**

"I just think it's so cool that you're in a band, Erik," said Raven from the couch five minutes later. She was wearing a homemade t-shirt that said CHILDREN OF THE ATOM FEED in blue and green puff paint. Emma was alternating her death glares between the two of them. Erik was constantly wondering when he'd just catch fire; Raven didn't seem to notice.

"Hi, Hank," she said, leaning to see him around Emma.

Young Hank was failing miserably at disappearing behind the drum kit but that wasn't a reflection on the effort he was making. "Hi, Raven," he mumbled.

Emma rolled her eyes up at the stained ceiling. "Let's do 'Death of a Sales Pitch', I want to use it at the battle of the bands," she said.

Raven's high-pitched, "You're going to the battle of the bands?" was drowned out by Emma's angry beat count into the microphone as she clutched her guitar neck like it was Raven's neck and hit a power stance. Erik dutifully struck up his bass line.

Emma found some kind of place between rage and serenity as she spat out the lyrics (it was an angry fucking song, one of her best) and they pretty much destroyed and rebuilt modern music in three and a quarter minutes. As the last guitar chords hummed into silence, Erik looked up at the couch to see their one-woman audience with her hands up in front of her mouth, staring at him adoringly.

Shit.

"That was so good," she breathed. "You guys are awesome."

Emma dropped her guitar into the rack she left in Young Hank's basement and stalked to the door without a word. The slam of the walk-out basement door behind her made Erik's teeth rattle.

"Can I sleep on your couch tonight?" he asked Young Hank without turning around.

"No, my aunt's here," said Young Hank, squeezing out from behind his kit and adjusting his glasses on his face.

"Oh," said Erik faintly. Young Hank gave him a sad smile and made for the stairs.

"See you at school, Hank," said Raven as he passed. His reply wasn't audible to human ears but Erik was pretty sure he caught the kid's lips moving.

Raven bounced up off the couch as soon as Young Hank disappeared up the stairs. "So," she said. "Wanna head up Yonge? I need to go hunt down some vinyl."

Erik stalled by taking off his bass and putting it in its case very slowly and carefully. Emma had set off warning bells in his head about Raven. But on the other hand, if he went home, he'd get decapitated and that would be terrible, so staying out as long as possible was the smartest option.

"Yeah, fine," he said.

 **SO YEAH**

When Erik quietly let himself into the basement apartment off Eglinton West, it was late and quiet and he hoped Emma had gone to bed. No such luck; he'd just toed off his second shoe when the lamp snapped on.

"Uh," he said.

She crossed her arms at him. "Erik," she said sweetly.

"No," he said. "I'm tired. Long day. Band practice. Need to sleep."

"Erik." Not as sweet.

He sighed and went to sit on the edge of the bed while she obligingly pulled her feet out of his way.

"This isn't still about that guy, is it?"

"What guy?" Erik asked.

"Sebastian?"

Erik glared at the floor.

"Look," she said. "He was an asshole, but now he's gone, and it's not that I think you had no right to be messed up about the whole thing, it's just that it was a fucking year ago. Okay?" She rubbed her hand up and down his arm sympathetically.

"We're just friends," he said again.

"Uh huh. Get some sleep, I'm all out of friendliness for today."

"It was a really good effort," he offered as she pulled the covers back for him.

The last thing he saw before she shut off the lamp (it sat on an upturned milk crate, the mattress was on the floor) was her smile.

"You still having those dreams?" she asked as he settled his head into the pillow.

"They're just dreams," he said through a yawn.

 **EXCEPT NO**

They were always the same thing; he dreamt he was another person, a guy, like the same age but British, and sometimes he'd dream about this guy doing normal things like doing the dishes or walking around (Toronto, places he didn't recognize but knew anyway were London, New York, Boston, Washington) or even sleeping (and that was a trip, dreaming about sleeping). A couple times he dreamed he was having sex, and then it just seemed rude not to wake up because it was like peeping. But then sometimes he was like, flying, or having an epic fistfight with somebody, or controlling other people with his mind, so it was more like a regular dream (the ones where he was onstage and realized he was naked and had to cover himself with his guitar) except for the part where he was in the head of another person who seemed like he was real.

It was weird and it drove him crazy with how real it felt, but the worst, most annoying thing was he didn't even know the guy's name.

 **ANYWAY**

The party was decent, Erik thought. Lots of people from around. Plentiful shit beer in more than one keg that Erik wasn't planning to drink anyway although he appreciated the thought. There was a DJ wearing a red devil mask. The hostess was some girl who knew someone who knew Emma, he didn't even know. Emma told him he was going to parties and he went. Young Hank was around somewhere, being corrupted probably and good for him. Emma had hissed something about Raven being banned from showing up, so he hadn't told her about it but from the turnout, he might run into her anyway at some point. He was braced for it, whatever.

He was talking to a guy named Darwin who he knew vaguely as a promoter for Edgefest when he stopped mid-sentence.

"Did you hear that?" he asked Darwin, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Darwin gave him the side-eye. "Hear what?" he asked, yelling under the thump of remixed K-Os spilling over the party.

Erik patted his shoulder and turned around. He'd heard a really familiar voice he couldn't place. There. British accent! Erik zeroed in on a guy standing ten feet away, talking at a redhead he wasn't going to get anywhere with. The voice nearly drove Erik to his knees; this was the guy from his dreams. He started pushing his way through the crowd but was cut off by three people carrying a beer-soaked ping-pong table through the room and then... gone.

"No!" he shouted, looking around wildly. Then he set off with a vague plan to set the ping-pong table on fire.

"Yo," said the girl who appeared in front of him, looking him up and down. "Going somewhere, baby?" she asked, tossing dark hair back over a shoulder tattooed with a giant dragonfly wing. This was Angel, the party hostess who Emma sort-of knew.

"Uh," he said, and stopped.

She took a sip from the red plastic cup in her hand. "Erik, right?" she asked. "Having a good time?"

He shrugged and then had an idea. "Hey, you know everybody here, don't you?"

"Probably," she said.

"Do you know a British guy," he said. "About that tall." He marked off the air near his eyes. "Blue eyes like...." He tried to indicate intensity with a gesture and wasn't sure he got it.

"Charles Xavier," she said immediately.

An angelic chorus sang, and Erik had a spiritual moment before he realized it was just the fucking DJ playing with sound effects.

"Where can I find him?" he asked.

"He's a grad student at U of T." She blew a kiss and walked away, melting back into the crowd.

Erik wondered if his one semester there would do him any favours now.


	2. park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik Lehnsherr: Unemployed loser who has played in several awful bands.  
> Charles Xavier: Grad student with a drinking problem he will tell you is entirely due to TAing.  
> Emma Frost: Writes secret love letters to Gordon Ramsay and then burns them.

**PRETTY SOON**

It didn't take Erik long to figure out that 'grad student at U of T' didn't cover much ground, because there were a lot of buildings on campus with a lot of people in them and he didn't even know what department Charles Xavier was in. But what Erik lacked in planning ability he made up for with the occasional stroke of genius, and so on a Tuesday morning he parked himself outside Robarts Library on campus. And waited.

It was getting cold and may have snowed on him slightly during the six hours he sat there, scanning faces. He hadn't thought to stop at the Second Cup inside the student centre before taking up his post but he didn't want to leave in case Charles walked by. For five seconds he considered calling Emma or Young Hank and making them bring him coffee, but Emma was probably at work and Young Hank had said something about a biology exam. Erik decided generously to leave them out of it, and not just because Emma would melt his face through the phone if he called her.

It was just after two in the afternoon when he saw familiar floppy hair approaching; Erik stood up, stamping his feet to get some feeling back, and watched Charles Xavier approach him underneath the floppy hair. He turned right in front of Erik on the sidewalk to head into Robarts like a predictable grad student; Erik walked toward him as if he hadn't just been sitting in front of the library all day. "Charles?" he called.

Charles stopped and looked around, caught sight of Erik and gave him a puzzled look. "Do I know you?" he asked, and his voice washed over Erik like a warm English cascade.

Erik opened his mouth and was suddenly concerned that nothing might come out. Then he said, "I see you in my dreams sometimes," and winced.

An ordinary person might have started taking slow steps backwards after having that said to them by a stranger, but Charles was not an ordinary person. He stayed where he was and looked uncomfortable. "You do?" he said. "Sorry, sometimes my mind wanders."

"Into my mind?"

Charles shrugged. "Do you sleep a lot?"

Erik's eyes slid away. He hadn't held down a job in six months. "Uh," he said, "I'm Erik."

"Nice to meet you properly," said Charles.

"You too. So you go to school here?"

"I'm doing my Master's in Biology. Speaking of, I've got a paper to write...." Charles jerked a thumb behind him at the library and Erik glanced up at the looming building.

"Do you think it looks like a turkey?" he said.

Charles burst out laughing. "Fort Barts? Yeah, I suppose. Although I prefer the Death Star nickname."

"Where do you think its weak point is?" asked Erik.

"Somewhere in the stacks. I've nearly located it and we'll shortly see this building's ruin."

"Once you've struck on behalf of the student alliance, do you want to meet up with me?" Erik said, way more smoothly than he'd expected he would.

The world stretched out between them as Charles stared at him; Erik was sure he could see cracks in space-time and hoped Charles would answer him soon.

"Yeah, alright," he said, not seeming to notice the rubber band-snap of reality back into order around them. He took out his phone and glanced at it as Erik tried to keep from doing a victory dance. "You know the Artful Dodger? Meet me there at... six. Good?" he asked, looking back up at Erik.

"Good," said Erik, and watched Charles walk into the library before jumping in the air for an epic fistpump.

 **AT SIX**

Erik stood on the sidewalk of Isabella Street, hands shoved in his coat pockets as he stared up at the brick frontage of the Artful Dodger. He knew the place, alright; his last band, The Tetris Boss Fight, had played a lot of open mic nights on their tiny little stage, entertaining the regulars. Of course, his favourite open mic regular had been.... He blinked, chasing away the memories.

"Hello!" called Charles from his left, and Erik turned to see him wave as he jogged up to the pub. "Sorry," he said. "I was all set to leave for the day and then this _bloody_ undergraduate had 'just one question about the lab', it's never one simple question," he muttered.

Erik bit down his grin. "Shall we?" he asked, tilting his head at the pub.

"I like the food here," admitted Charles as they grabbed a table. "Reminds me of home."

Erik nodded and then raised an eyebrow when their waitress greeted Charles by name and then asked, "Shepherd's pie and a pint?"

"Yes, please," said Charles without a trace of embarrassment.

"How about Carlsberg today?"

"Sounds lovely," he said.

"And what'll you have?" she asked Erik.

"Uh," he said, "I really don't drink."

"What?" said Charles. "Beer hardly counts."

Erik blinked.

"Two Carlsbergs," Charles told the waitress, and she winked before walking off. "If you insist on not drinking a pint in the closest thing Toronto has to a proper English pub, then I'll have yours," he said, which Erik guessed settled the matter. "You're not having food, though? You don't mind if I eat?"

Erik waved it off. "No, eat your dinner. I ate." He'd found a quarter-pack of gum in the pocket of his coat, anyway.

The beer arrived in short order and Charles asked, "So, what do you do?"

Erik somehow hadn't seen this question coming and wasn't really prepared for it. "I'm. I'm in a band," he said after panicking for a minute. He still thought it sounded a lot like 'I don't have a job'.

But all Charles said was, "I thought you said you didn't drink."

Erik looked down at his hand and saw his pint of beer in it. A quarter of it was gone. He set the glass down carefully on his wet beer mat. "I don't drink very often," he said. "Special occasions."

"So what's your band called?" Charles asked, leaning back in his chair as his food arrived.

"Children of the Atom Feed."

"Are you any good?"

"We're playing a battle of the bands this month," said Erik, sidestepping answering the question with something honest like 'not really, no, I don't think we are'.

"I believe I have possibly seen flyers stapled on every square foot of campus about that."

"First show's on Friday night at The Rockit, do you want to come?" Erik blurted, and then silently cursed himself.

But Charles said, "I'd love to," and Erik's heart melted a little as he reached unthinkingly for his beer again.

 **LATER AND ELSEWHERE**

"Where the hell were you?" Emma asked when Erik floated in the door late that evening. "That child called about six times looking for you. Something about meeting her at the Reference Library. Eventually I just unplugged the landline," she said, sounding bored as she grabbed the juice and kicked the fridge door shut.

Erik came back to Earth pretty abruptly. "I was nowhere," he said as he hung up his coat. "Doing nothing."

"Uh huh." The microwave dinged. "You've got mail," she said, waving at an envelope sitting on the kitchen island as she opened the microwave door and snatched out a bag of popcorn. "Also, shut up for an hour, it's time for Kitchen Nightmares."

"Gordon Ramsay will never return your love," said Erik out of spite as Emma conveyed her snack to the single armchair that sat in front of the TV (both belonged to her, along with all of the other furniture and the vast majority of the food, because Emma had an actual job at a clothing store and paid for everything).

"You get your dream man, I get mine," she said cattily, and Erik had no answer to that so he just ripped open his envelope with extreme prejudice. It was only after doing that that he even thought to look at the front of it. What was left of it was handwritten and had no return address or stamp; it had been hand-delivered.

"Was this in the mailbox?" he asked.

"I asked for silence."

He rolled his eyes and unfolded the letter. It had a letterhead and everything and he was concerned it was somebody demanding money by the end of the month, but when he scanned it he only saw 'our organization' and 'representatives will be contacting you shortly' and 'fight to the death' and he was already bored, so he tossed the letter onto the counter and went to take a shower before bed.

That night, he dreamed Charles was up half the night staring at a half-written paper about evolutionary developmental biology (which made perfect sense to him until he woke up in the morning and it was all gibberish) and smiling to himself randomly.


	3. either dead or in serious trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik Lehnsherr: Power: 50. Special attack: Metal Manipulation  
> Moira McTaggart: Power: 48. Special attack: Heavenly Fist  
> Emma Frost: Power: over 9000. Special attack: Intimidation

**FRIDAY**

The pit of a club called The Rockit was filling up slowly; Young Hank was peering out from backstage at the crowd while the other band--Play Him Off--did sound check and Erik and Emma had quiet panic attacks in the wings.

"Okay, just give us the bad news," said Erik with his eyes shut, leaning his whole body back into the sweaty cinder block wall like he might fall off the earth.

"Rip off the band-aid quick," agreed Emma, sounding shaky.

Erik peeked his eyes open as Young Hank turned around and shoved his glasses back up his nose. "Good crowd," he said.

He took less than three seconds to buckle under their combined stares.

"Okay!" he shouted. "Like three quarters of them are wearing Play Him Off swag."

" _Swag_ ," Erik hissed.

"We could get your underage girlfriend to bust out her puff paint and make more t-shirts," said Emma, sagging into the wall. "I'm not against child labour."

"We're going to get destroyed in the first round," Erik moaned, feeling the room spin. Then it jerked, but that was because Emma had just yanked him forward by the elbow, hauling him over to the side of the stage. They stared at Lars Larson, tuning his guitar like Thor giving his hammer a test swing. He did a microphone check and four girls in the crowd fainted.

Emma staggered back from the stage. "Oh god," she whimpered. "Oh god."

"Emma," Erik started, his own desperation forgotten while she hyperventilated.

"This is terrible," she said.

"Emma."

"Our career is over before it started."

"Emma!"

"I'm going to be working at Le Chateau forever!"

Erik slapped her and just hoped it wouldn't leave a mark on her cheek.

She blinked. Young Hank was pale and quiet in the background. Emma raised a shaky hand to her face.

"Stay cool, Frosty," he said, his voice coming out weak.

Emma prodded at her cheek and worked her jaw, but it was really just kind of pink. Then she glared at him. "You talentless piece of shit, I can't believe you fucking slapped me," she said calmly.

"Did it work?" Erik asked, moving his weight to his back foot.

"Yes," she said after a moment. "But you're still a piece of shit."

"I've been called worse by better," Erik pointed out.

"You wish," she shot back, and slapped his ass before stalking off to the bathroom. She moved exactly like a predator (if predators wore stiletto-heeled boots) and Erik immediately felt better.

"What just happened?" Young Hank asked shakily.

"It defies explanation," said Erik. Behind them, Play Him Off began their set, and they went to watch. It was earthshakingly loud and depressingly awesome; Erik hoped Emma was applying warpaint.

 **SOON**

Only a little of the crowd cleared out after Lars Larson and company finished their three-chord assault on hearts and minds, so Erik felt better than he'd thought he would when Children of the Atom Feed took the stage. They tuned their shit quickly and he watched Emma step up to the microphone, focussed on the floor. She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and took a deep breath before turning her attention to the crowd; Erik was sure they could see how blue her eyes were from the back of the club.

"We are Children of the Atom Feed," she said, like a battle-cry, shifting on one spiky heel as Young Hank counted off the beat and slamming her arm down her guitar on the first power chord. She managed to drown out Raven, who was standing at Erik's side of the stage cheering and waving her arms in the air.

Possibly she did it on purpose, Erik thought as he laid down his bassline in some calm, zen place between Young Hank's fine percussion and Emma's bloodthirsty axe-handling.

They were playing a three-song set and had made it halfway through the last one--the crowd finally abandoning that disaffected hipster shit to crowd the stage--and it seemed like they were going to survive the first round of the battle after all. Emma was on a solo and Erik lifted his head to let his eyes wander around the crowd. Raven was still as close as she could get to the stage, staring up at him with what looked like adoration; his gaze skipped past her. There, in the back of the room, his eyes were drawn there like a magnet, and finally he spotted Charles, sitting at a high table with someone who was either homeless or maybe working on their doctorate.

Erik nearly missed his cue because Charles gave him a little thumbs-up and a grin. Had he been there the entire time? Erik hadn't dared to look for him earlier. Too busy listening for the swan song of his music career while Emma had histrionics. He stumbled through the rest of the song, although it was one of their oldest, and had to keep himself from searching out Charles' face again until the last sounds dwindled from their amps.

A few people clapped in a shocking display of opinion, while some more nodded in vague approval of their set. Emma swished past with a squeeze to Erik's elbow and Young Hank was just disentangling himself from the drum kit when there was a ripple in the crowd.

"Erik Lehnsherr!" a female voice shouted.

Erik froze in the act of taking off his guitar. He saw Charles leap out of his chair and rush toward the stage, pushing through the crowd. A lady in her twenties had beaten him to the front, though, and the people around her pushed back in a semicircle as she vaulted onto the stage in one smooth movement.

"Who are you?" Erik asked her. She was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt and some military surplus-looking dog tags hung around her neck, shining in the spotlight. All she needed was one of those Mao hats.

"Moira!" Charles called. He'd made it to the front of the crowd.

"Charles," she said gravely. "You know why I'm here." She pinned Erik with a look. "So do you."

Erik backed up half a step and nearly tripped over his amp cord. "I actually don't."

Moira blinked. "Didn't you get the letter?"

A vague image flashed into Erik's mind; he batted it away. "What letter?"

She looked lost at that. "I delivered the damn thing myself. Your roommate took it into your shitty apartment. How did you not see it?"

"Well, just tell me what it said." Erik crossed his arms; the stage lights were too hot for standing around in confusion. Charles was scrambling up onto the stage, dodging the bouncer. You could have heard a safety pin drop in the audience. Possibly one did, but Erik couldn't be sure.

Moira sighed. "I represent the..." She gritted her teeth. "The _Ex-Men_ , or as I voted for us to be called, the League for Charles Xavier's Well-Being. Seven of us have stepped forward to face you in mortal combat for his hand." She faltered. "It was really all in that letter."

Vague recollections of a letter were floating through Erik's brain; he waved them off. "Representative of the Ex-Men?" he asked. "Seven of you are representatives? You all dated him?" He whirled on Charles. "How many exes do you _have_?"

Charles seemed to find a stain on the floor really fascinating.

"Enough of this shit," Moira snapped. "Are you prepared to die at my hands, Erik Lehnsherr?"

"What?" he squeaked.

"Oh, who cares?" she said, and assumed a fighting stance. Erik barely had time to toss his guitar at Young Hank before Moira charged him with a yell. He dodged her first two attacks by a hair and then staggered back.

"Erik! What the fuck!" Emma hissed at him.

"This crazy woman came out of nowhere!" he said, watching Moira push stray hairs out of her face and start circling slowly to his left. "I don't know what to do!"

"What the hell did I _teach_ you to do? Go on the offensive!"

"I can't hit a girl!" he yelped.

Emma twisted his arm behind his back, straining it at the shoulder until he had to bite down a whimper. "Erik, you will defeat that crazy woman in mortal combat like she said or I will finish you off myself!"

She shoved him forward at that and Erik staggered to keep off of his face, rolling his shoulder away from a flying kick by Moira. She rolled straight into a roundhouse aimed at his face and he ducked backward under it, watching the hem of her jeans pass over a hands-breadth above his nose.

Then she kicked his feet out from under him, and as he lay on the stage and tried to catch his breath, he made up his mind.

Erik rolled to the side while Moira's axe-kick slammed into the stage, shaking it a little with the force (it wasn't a well-built stage, either), and was on his feet with his hands up in loose fists as she slid back into a defensive posture.

"Ready to get serious?" she breathed.

"No," he said truthfully.

"Too bad!" And with that, she rushed him again.

Erik watched her approach as though in slow-motion, seeing her feint and the left she was bringing across behind it. He countered and sent her flying. Her skid across the floor on her back almost took her headfirst off of the stage.

"Erik!" Charles pleaded. "Moira! Stop this!"

"You know the rules, Charles," Moira huffed as she jumped to her feet.

"They're idiotic rules!" he snapped back, but Erik didn't have time to agree with Charles because he was contending with a flurry of punches. Moira was a martial arts expert; all he could do was deflect most of them to lesser targets on his body, and he flinched with the force of her hits. Bitch was wearing rings.

He thought he saw one window for attack and took it, trying for a right cross to her undefended middle, but it was a trick and then she had his arm, pulling it up behind his back like Emma had (except harder) and yanking his neck into a sleeper hold. Erik choked.

"I could tell you weren't good enough for him," said Moira softly into his ear. "And your band sucks."

The world grew dim and muffled, and Erik thought to look for Charles but couldn't really stand to see the heartbroken look on his face even if he could find him again.

He was about to just close his eyes when Emma's voice rang through his head. "Erik!" she shouted, all venom. "Don't be a pussy! I taught you better than that!"

Erik gasped for air and then muzzily caught an idea. He retreated into his head and reached out, searching. The dog tags. They hung around Moira's neck and he could actually feel their slight weight between his shoulder blades as she bore him down toward the stage. Their strong, shiny metal sang to Erik and he imagined them being yanked from behind her neck by an invisible hand.

Moira made a choking sound behind him. Erik kept pulling on the tags with his invisible hand and she choked harder, hard enough to gasp for air and loosen her hold. He sucked in sweet oxygen and kept hauling on the chain, and she finally released him to claw at her throat, at the chain digging into her skin there.

Erik got to his feet, coughing, and faced her. Her eyes bulged at him with hatred.

"I can't hit girls," he said again, "but you don't fight like one, anyway."

He released his hold on her dog tags long enough for her to sag forward, and then he let her have that right cross. Her head snapped to the left from the force and she fell backward. Erik watched in amazement as she hit the stage hard and exploded into a glittering shower that rattled and bounced across the floor.

He was vaguely aware of people shouting behind him as he stared down at the quarter next to his foot. "Coins?" he asked no one in particular. "She exploded into coins?" Then he realized there were some TTC tokens in the mess and decided beggars couldn't be choosers.

Emma and Young Hank rushed to his side as Erik reached out a hand and watched the money and tokens float up into the air, pulled by his mind. He cupped his hands to catch them all and grinned at Emma.

"Your idiocy almost killed you, I hope you realize that," she snapped.

"But it didn't," he said, smiling down at his prize. There was coffee money and transit fare for like two weeks, here. Score.

"That was amazing," said Young Hank. "Is she dead?"

"I think she is," said Erik, blinking. Ew, was this money made out of a corpse? Like blood money but worse?

"It was her or you," said Emma dismissively.

Charles was the next to reach his side. "Christ, are you alright?" he asked in a rush.

"Yeah," said Erik. "Come on, Charles," he said suddenly. "Let's get out of here."

Charles watched him silently for a minute before answering, "Yeah, alright."

 **AND SO**

Erik stared vacantly out the window at the glittering lights as the bus bumped down Queen St.

"So who was Moira?" he asked. It was the first thing he'd said since dragging Charles off the stage and out of the club, leaving Emma to take his guitar home.

Charles sighed and his shoulders slumped. "Moira McTaggart was a girl I met at science camp when I was thirteen."

"Science camp?" Erik echoed, making a face.

"I went to school in the United States between years five and nine, while my mother was married to an American." Charles was staring at his hands in his lap. "Moira was my first girlfriend, for a shining three weeks."

"And all this time later she's fighting deathmatches in your name?"

"I think it meant even more to her than it did to me," said Charles. He seemed to have a gift of understatement. "Anyway, I wrote to her for about a month after science camp before that stopped; she'd still send me the occasional email later on, though. She was a CIA agent, I understand."

"Is that where she learned Krav Maga?"

"Most likely."

Erik nodded. "What was that about fighting for your hand?"

"My exes target my currents; it's their way of judging their worthiness to be with me."

There was a lot of information to take from that. Erik settled on what he thought was the most important point. "So I'm your current?"

The look Charles gave him made Erik think that maybe wasn't the important point for _everyone_. "Er," he said.

"Hey," said Erik, "if I have to fight a bunch more of your ex-girlfriends--"

"Exes," corrected Charles.

"--Or whatever, then I want to know why I'm doing it," he finished.

Charles gnawed his lip a little, staring past Erik out the window. "I suppose, if you like, then we are dating," he said finally. "Unless you want to back out. I might be able to call them all off if you want to back out."

Erik just turned Charles' face toward his and kissed him. Charles flailed for a second before grabbing at Erik's shoulder and hauling him in closer, clutching harder when the bus hit a pothole. It was awesome.

***


End file.
